Global guidance, local ethics: how international organisations shape ethical decision-making in public health emergencies

Ethical decision-making happens all the time during health policy development. When national policymakers face a public health emergency requiring urgent response, they may seek input from international organisations, particularly where national resources are limited. The advice they receive is not merely technical (Orton et al. 2011), but rather involves value trade-offs, setting priorities, and balancing rights and obligations (Quinn and Kumar 2014) that a country may have toward its residents. The WHO and other international organisations such as UNICEF and CEPI may play a critical role in this process, introducing values and norms into national-level policy responses to emergencies. In this project, the DPhil candidate will examine how international organisations affect ethical reasoning and policy choice, assessing a series of case studies (e.g., Nipah virus disease outbreak responses in Bangladesh, dengue fever vaccine roll-outs in the Philippines, and/or COVID-19 response in the UK). 

Key questions that this DPhil project will address include: 

• What ethical frameworks or principles do international organisations tend to promote, across cases? 

• How are these adapted or re-negotiated by national-level policymakers? 

• By what process do ethical frameworks or principles from international organisations lead to particular policy choices, and how might the process be improved to more reliably secure ethically preferable policy choices? 

This project offers the DPhil candidate the opportunity to gain experience in theoretical bioethics and qualitative research methods. 

Training provided will focus on ethical analysis, process tracing and qualitative document analysis. The project will offer the opportunity to work on important questions in global health, and to build networks with experts in the field.  

This project involves desk-based research and fieldwork. Fieldwork is flexible but may include research visits to key international organizations such as the WHO headquarters in Geneva, and/or research visits to national/local policymakers in Bangladesh, the Philippines, or within the UK. Empirical data may be collected using methods including in-depth interviews, focus groups, or consensus-building workshops. 

Training via the University of Oxford’s CoSy platform will be available. The Ethox centre provides regular seminars and training opportunities for research skills development. The candidate will be encouraged to attend offerings by the Pandemic Sciences Institute and the Uehiro Oxford Institute.